Synology

Synology is a Taiwanese corporation that specializes in network-attached storage (NAS) appliances.

Synology

Basic information
Founded	2000
Type	Private
Industry	Network-attached storage
Official website	https://www.synology.com/

They have built a reputation for using open standards (eg. relying on standard Linux RAID instead of proprietary RAID like QNAP), providing feature and security updates for a very long time (in some cases offering security fixes for 12 year old hardware) and offering replacement parts for a long time and at a reasonable cost.

Recently the business has had a shift towards blocking third-party drives on their NAS systems.

Consumer-impact summary

• User freedom: Has revoked ability to use off-brand hard drives from modern NAS models.
• User privacy: Unknown.
• Business model: Selling digital storage devices to consumers.
• Market control: Limited; notable amount of competition from other brands such as Western Digital, Samsung, and SanDisk.

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Synology category.

Requiring Synology-branded hard drives for certain features (2025)

Main article: Synology requiring proprietary-branded drives to be used with its NAS

Further reading: Guide: How to circumvent Synology hard drive restrictions

For the Plus Series of NAS systems, Synology required the use of their own rebranded hard drives in order to obtain full functionality.

Reported by Hardwareluxx, using non-Synology-branded hard drives will lose critical functions for the NAS, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates. The company also restricts storage pools and provides limited or zero support for third-party drives.

The models manufactured on or before 2024 are not affected by this change. Still, those upgrading to or purchasing the latest Plus Series device, set to be released this year, will have to buy their drives directly from Synology or its certified suppliers to maximize their system. Because of this, you won’t be able to pick from the best hard drives if you get Synology’s latest Plus Series NAS Systems.

This can currently be circumvented at the user's own risk with a hack using a script available on Github that adds the drives in the system to the list of compatible drives. Other solutions use changes to configuration files to disable the checks. However, these workarounds may cease to function at any time or have unexpected side effects or consequences.

Intel C2000 controversy (2015)

Some of the 2015 series NAS devices from Synology used an Intel C2000 series processor, which, due to a clock issue on Intel's side, would cease to function after a certain time. Synology did replace affected devices if they failed within the warranty period, but the replacements were identical devices that had the same defect and would again cease to function after a certain amount of time.

The issue can be permanently fixed by installing a simple resistor on the main board of the device. This requires basic soldering skills.

Proprietary bootloader

Unlike on competing products, It is not easily possible to install a Linux distribution other than the manufacturer's DSM. This makes it difficult to repurpose the devices for other uses or install alternative software when support runs out for the manufacturer's OS. The devices also have no video output, thus limiting other uses.

Products

Network Attached Storage (NAS) / Storage Area Network (SAN):

• Plus-Series NAS: In 2025, new Plus-Series NAS systems can only support proprietary hard drives.

Backup/Recovery

• No relevant products for wiki yet

Surveillance

• No relevant products for wiki yet

Routers

• No relevant products for wiki yet

See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.

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